Examination of the feasibility and utility of flexible and conditional administration of the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-2-Restructured Form.

Over the past several decades, use of broadband personality assessments has decreased, with some clinicians favoring shorter, symptom-focused measures with a shorter administration time. The purpose of this study is to describe, derive rules for, and evaluate a flexible and conditional administration of the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI)-2-Restructured Form (MMPI-2-RF). In this approach, elevated scores on higher level scales are used to trigger administration of lower-level scales within the same assessment domain to minimize administration time. We conducted a real-data simulation to derive rules for and evaluate this administration strategy using the MMPI-2-RF normative sample and a community mental health center comparison group. These samples allow for comparing the utility of the method in populations with relatively low and high base rates of psychopathology, respectively. The flexible and conditional administration strategy resulted in minimal loss of information in separate subsamples used to evaluate the method. However, item savings were more pronounced in the normative sample, in which administration time was decreased by 40% to 80% depending on the number of substantive domains assessed. Overall, flexible and conditional administration of the MMPI-2-RF appears to hold substantial promise in settings with time constraints and relatively low base rates of psychopathology, such as medical patient and neuropsychological evaluations as well as assessments of candidates for public safety positions. Other implications of these findings and limitations of this study are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record